Food dehydration and vacuum sealing

I have a Nesco, which is now selling for about $40. Others may have $60-100 models. Make sure the fan works, but isn't too loud. My sealer is a Foodsaver and I see it sells for $150.

One good choice is to dehydrate your leftovers, after chopping up all of the meat into smaller pieces. If you are thinking about pasta dishes, after drying them place a paper towel inside the sealer bag before sealing in the meal. This will save the bag from having holes poked in it by the pasta, or you can use pasta without sharp ends, like macaroni. I like to use Orzo for my pasta, as I find it dries well and rehydrates quickly.

I am doing extended kayak trips in the Winter, as I live in Florida now. One of the advantages of kayaks are that you can bring the meats in cans and foil packs, and not be bothered with dehydrating them at all. You can also buy #10 cans of freeze-dried meats to add to your dehydrated meal. Anything Mt House makes, you can make at home and it will taste better, but it does take some prep work at home. Nothing like heating up the oven or stove top for a couple of days while you make up some meals in bulk and dehydrate them all night long.

For ideas about recipes, try trail cooking. The site is a wonderful resource. There are others, like Babelfish5. He has several good recipes for dehydrating, but Sarah at Trail Cooking has a wider variety.

sarbar I fear this poster was on board for 15 minutes, and has yet to return. I hope he does come back and finds the info.

Regarding cleaning, we probably wouldn't have to do it very often, but Mrs. big_load likes to dehydrate 40-80 pounds of apples in the fall, pretty much all at the same time. She also does a lot of softer fruit, like kiwi and pineapple. That goops up the element a bit.

When I was experimenting with a new recipe, I would get hot water from the work kitchen, and add it to my dehydrated meal. Then, let it sit for 8-10 minutes. Nuking a dehydrated meal doesn't reduce the amount of time it takes it to absorb the water.

I'm curious what everyone actually ends up doing.

What is everyone's top few dehydrated meals? Is it a taste favorite? Classic nostalgia made with memories? Ease of use or prep?

Mine is the pure dehydrated joy of backpacking but I doubt I would get far on the trail with that.

I come back to old favorites over and over, because they are tasty and satisfying (and some, like mashed potatoes with hamburger gravy, are nostalgic as well). I experiment some each trip, as well as go back to the favorites. I realized this summer that I could do 10 days without repeating anything, though my husband was a little sorry not to get some of the meals twice, and probably at least one I tried won’t make it into the repertoire.

Nope. I try completely new recipes on the trail. Sometimes I make non-dried versions at home first to see what I think (I did that with all the main-dish salads I took on our trip this summer), but often I’ll put stuff together and trust it will be good. I’ve been cooking for long enough to have a pretty good idea what is an adequate amount of food, and also what will taste good. I don’t use freeze-dried meals, though I do use freeze-dried ingredients. Those are too expensive to be messing with eating them at home. I did make good use of leftover FD veggies this summer. I sealed them in bags with enough to add to a dinner for 2, and tossed them in the car-camping food box for our trip across the country. With a bag of substrates and a bag of sauces, I was able to cook dinner even when we couldn’t find a grocery store.

Most of our backpacking dinners are too salty for use at home; I like to restore some of the salt we sweat out on the trail, but otherwise keep salt consumption to a minimum.